A Burden Shared
by DOC3
Summary: Booth shares his coma experience with Bones. ONE-SHOT


Title: **A Burden Shared**  
Author: Doc_3  
Rating: PG  
Word Count: 1182  
Spoilers: Through Season 4  
Disclaimer: If I owned them, things would be sooooo much different :)  
Summary: Booth shares his experience during the coma with Bones. ONE-SHOT.

*****

"What I told you was _private_ Bones, don't you get it? It was not something for you to go blabbing off about."

"I wasn't 'blabbing off' about it, Booth. I merely had a professional concern that I shared with your physician, in the manner that colleagues would share such concern over a patient."

"I am not your patient, Bones. Your patients are all dead guys. I am your _partner_. Your partner that shared with you some _private_ information. Now I have an MRI on Monday. All thanks to you sharing a 'professional concern'."

They entered her office, neither acknowledging the cool respite from the hot August heat they had left behind. The rest of the lab was mostly empty, the platform dark. It was nearly three weeks since Booth returned from his two-month medical leave and merely ten hours into their first case. It looked like it would be a slam-dunk, a fact which made Booth very happy until the phone call from the doctor's office.

Brennan immediately went straight to her desk, thumbing through the paperwork left by diligent interns, when she spoke, not even looking up at him.

"You needn't be angry with me Booth. Dr. Jursik agreed that your inability to separate reality from the fantasy your mind created during your time under anesthesia is concerning, and warrants follow up. I felt it was my duty to contact him about this, and in truth it would have been remiss on his part not to order the MRI."

Booth huffed out a breath in frustration, scrubbing his hands over his face before speaking.

"I do not have an 'inability to separate reality from fantasy', Bones. That is not what I told you and you know it."

At his tone, low and a bit forced, she looked up. Finding him merely a foot away unnerved her somewhat but she clenched her jaw and lifted her chin defiantly. She knew she had done the right thing, calling Booth's doctor. In the past, ignoring the bizarre things he had told her – about the hockey player and the young man from the Army –could have cost Booth his life. She would never disregard another fantastical thing he told her again.

"You told me you were having trouble looking at me and not seeing the woman from your coma, and that you were continuing to have moments where you thought you were back in that dream and I was your wife, and that to me was very concerning and so I called your surgeon. I don't see why this is such a problem for you, Booth."

"You twisted my words, Bones. What I said was that it was so incredibly real and vivid in the dream that sometimes I still wake up and for a split second forget it _was _a dream. And that sometimes I start to call you 'Bren' instead of Bones before I catch myself. I was explaining why I was distracted and you turned it into this… this … inability _to separate fantasy from reality_."

She held her hands out and spread her fingers wide, shrugging slightly. "I don't see the difference, Booth."

He turned on his heel and walked a few steps, rubbing the back of his neck, after a muttered, "of course you don't".

Turning back to her, he just stood there, in his wrinkled suit and too short hair, and let his features fall in defeat. She had eased a hip onto her desk and was watching him with that wide-eyed stare, her head tilted as she observed him. Maybe he was losing it and maybe he really did need an MRI. How could he wake up and think for even a second he was married to this woman?

"Bones, I wasn't saying I didn't know that you weren't my wife and that the coma dream wasn't just that – a dream. I was saying that it was so _real_ at the time- that my memories of it were so vivid- that sometimes it felt like I was remembering something that actually happened, instead of remembering a dream."

He took a few steps closer and watched her eyes widen then narrow as he invaded her personal space.

"What I was trying to say was that I remember every detail of that damn dream, and it will be years before I can put it out of my mind. It's not something that will show up on an MRI, it's in here" – he thumped his hand over his chest – "and will be here for a long time. That's something you have to learn to live with, just like I do."

"I don't understand, Booth. Why should your dream be something that I have to live with? It was _your_ dream. Your brain created it out of an attempt to piece together random thoughts and memories, and I was simply part of those pieces."

He was even closer to her now, another step and they would be touching. It was making her heart beat rapidly and her stomach clench, for reasons she could not explain. He still seemed to be angry but it was different now; something darker and quieter behind his eyes.

"Because it was the way your breath caught when I touched you that I remember. The way your eyes widened when I stood too close. The way your heart pounded when I kissed you. That is what is inside of me now, Bones, and maybe it should be inside you too."

"Booth, I don't understand, how…"

Before she finished her sentence he closed the distance between them and wrapped his hands around her upper arms, pulling her to him.

Lips crashing together, tongues tangling, her hands were pushing at his chest until they were pulling. Pulling him to her, fingers grasping his shirt, wanting him _closer, Booth_, the desk digging into her hip, his hands flexing as they held her in place even though she couldn't move.

A low sound in the back of her throat brought him to his senses, realizing that it would only take one more moment, one more moan, and he would take her right here on her desk. With a gasp of breath he broke the kiss, stumbling back slightly and pressing his fist to his mouth.

"That is what is inside of me, Bones," he panted. "That is what I wake up and remember. What I see in my mind. What I feel in here," he repeated the chest thump of earlier, stepping further back away from her.

"Now it's inside both of us."

She could only sit there and watch him stalk away, through the dim corridor, as she stayed frozen in the place he left her. A few moments passed and she touched her fingertips to her swollen lips, knowing Booth was right. That moment would be inside her forever.

END


End file.
